Healthy cooking, happy families, and active living.

Christmas 2012 vs. Laura

Ok since Christmas is TOMORROW I need to get my act together and post this TODAY!

I know I claim that I am a busy woman who tries to do it all everyday, hence where my blog name is derived from, but between work, working out, cooking a healthy meal AND above all being Super Mom and Super Wife I am always pooped by the day’s end. Either way, I am here to tell you staying at home is HARD. I always knew this of course and you can argue it is a different HARD than what working moms experience, but I lived it firsthand this past week for ONE day and I was exhausted. I was out of town again for work during the week but I was able to cut the trip one day short so I decided to take advantage of the extra day and give myself a personal day. I had this bright idea that the kids and I could play hookie and get into the Christmas spirit. I had PLANNED making homemade ornaments and creating our first family gingerbread house in addition to the normal day stuff of cleaning, cooking, running errands, getting a haircut for the boys and working out. Ask me what we got accomplished? Haircuts and CrossFit. That is it folks. It took us 4 days to get the gingerbread house to resemble a “house” which of course looked nothing like the box (come on people, who makes those houses, professionals?) and it took 17 days to finish the cute homemade Christmas ornaments (post to follow). So what did I learn? I bit off more than I could chew.

After feeling super discouraged, I confided in several friends and they said my first mistake was planning too much in one day and the second mistake was trying to accomplish too many technical crafts. Boy do all these crafts look cute on Pinterest but no one tells you that YOURS will not look like anything like the examples on the computer. And no one for sure tells you that when you involve two crazy toddlers you have to multiply the prep time by 4 times. There needs to be fine print with all these cute “great idea fairies” because I have learned firsthand that Pinterest can be your best friend and your arch nemesis at the same time.

Either way looking bad it was fun month of Christmas activities but going through it all I wanted to pull out my hair. Leave it to me to tell you the truth folks. There is no sugar coating anything on ourfullplate.com. Being a Super Mom over the holidays is impossible. I can’t wait till Christmas is here so I can finally relax! Despite the chaos, I hope everyone is having fun with their families for the holidays. Merry Christmas from my family to yours!

Here is a snap shot of haircuts, outtakes from sitting on Santa’s lap and our gingerbread house escapades.

Before and after shots of Pre-Holiday Haircuts:

Pre hair cut…Can you say shag much?

Victory lap picture with new haircuts and their prize for sitting still: lollipops!

Reason why I do not spend money and take the boys to get their picture with Santa:

Why I rarely spend money on Santa pictures

Poor Julian who is deathly afraid of Santa. Merry Christmas from Jackson and Bah Humbug from Julian!

Our first (and maybe our last) Cross Gingerbread House Experience:

Attempting to make our first Cross Gingerbread house

Clearly my kids don’t get enough sweets because when they are in contact with it, they will go as far to lick it off your hands! Obvi this added to the difficulty of making our gingerbread house

Had to call the reinforcements. Daddy to the rescue but that house was hopeless

I could not fight it any longer, the boys wanted to taste it.

A Kid friendly, edible version of a ginger bread house…graham crackers!

Julian cared more about eating his than standing his up and making it resemble anything like a house (or shack)

Our gingerbread house looks nothing like the box despite our multiple efforts. And it only took us 4 days to finish!

Did you have any holiday craft disasters you want to share? What worked and what didn’t work? What made the cut and will be traditions in your family for years to come?